Dark Animus 10M HC Tips?

Hello everyone,

this week we start with the progress on Dark Animus heroic on 10 man mode. Afaik it should be one of the harder encounters in this progress tier and besides the number of healers and some positioning there is not many useful information you can get in recent killvideos. Are there any special tricks that can make your life much easier in this fight?

2 Blood Death Knights and a Brewmaster Monk works like a charm. There will be no tank swaps and the monk can handle half of the Anima Rings by himself - our monk also managed to roll out, but that caused a lot of unnecessary movement for the melees at time and he risked rolling into fire on the ground. Instead we had a DPS soak every 2nd Anima Ring.
Have an assigned ranged DPS to stand the furthest away from the boss so that you know who will be swapped when Matter Swap occurs.. The one swapped out should stand still (still dodging fire on the ground) and until the next matter swap.. Only when a melee gets the debuff and is swapped out you want to have a ranged dps/healer to run out again.
There will be 3 "electrified" Large Golems during the last phase of the encounter where only the Massive Golems and Dark Animus are active. You want to drag the Massive Golems over to each their Large Golem and kill them (the large) when 4 anima has been drained from the large golem - which means that there also will be room for another 4 in the Massive Golem thus extending the time before Full Power from Dark Animus towards the end. (I might remember incorrectly regarding how much anima has to be drained before killing the Large Golems).

What we did was kill 4 adds into 2 broken midsize golems at one side, have the tank that tanks animus also tank 1 little add, and have the other side full of multi dotters (generally warlocks since their pets can tank an add as well). The second tank would pick up the big golems and people would start killing their small adds into it. After that he'd get the broken ones in the room into the big golems as well.
We used a rogue to handle the anima ring. After the small golems were all gone it was just spread around the boss and burn.

I think that's the gist of our strategy. I was one of the 4 that just kills his add into a midsized one and went onto the boss after, so could have something wrong here. Hoping the general idea works for you though.

We are starting this boss this week. I've seen setup of 2 tanks 2 healers, 3 tanks 2 healers and 2 tanks 3 healers. Which of these do you think is the easiest? Any other advice would be greatly appreciated.

We are starting this boss this week. I've seen setup of 2 tanks 2 healers, 3 tanks 2 healers and 2 tanks 3 healers. Which of these do you think is the easiest? Any other advice would be greatly appreciated.

3 tanks, 2 healers is by far the easiest. It also helps to know the comp, but a Paladin can DS his stacks off, and a DK can negate stacks with AMS and have his fall off as well. There will be a lot of taunt swaps if you don't have these classes in your comp.

3 tanks, 2 healers is by far the easiest. It also helps to know the comp, but a Paladin can DS his stacks off, and a DK can negate stacks with AMS and have his fall off as well. There will be a lot of taunt swaps if you don't have these classes in your comp.

Thats good to hear we have a prot pally and a blood dk. With a 3rd weak offspec blood dk ~510 ilvl.

Thats good to hear we have a prot pally and a blood dk. With a 3rd weak offspec blood dk ~510 ilvl.

Yea, our Blood DK alt was 510 I think too when we killed it. Or pretty close to it, so you will be fine. Bloods on the Massive's, Pally on the boss. You will have to have DPS soak an Anima Ring orb for the Paladin to escape every time, but that is no big deal.

Yea, our Blood DK alt was 510 I think too when we killed it. Or pretty close to it, so you will be fine. Bloods on the Massive's, Pally on the boss. You will have to have DPS soak an Anima Ring orb for the Paladin to escape every time, but that is no big deal.

3 tanks, 2 healers is by far the easiest. It also helps to know the comp, but a Paladin can DS his stacks off, and a DK can negate stacks with AMS and have his fall off as well. There will be a lot of taunt swaps if you don't have these classes in your comp.

Just curious: why is 3 tanks/2 heal so much easier, especially compared to 2 tank/2 heal? Is it the debuff management, positioning, damage intake?

Just curious: why is 3 tanks/2 heal so much easier, especially compared to 2 tank/2 heal? Is it the debuff management, positioning, damage intake?

There are 3 mobs to tank at the end, two of which get empowered and deal even more damage as the fight goes on. Plus you have to tank the boss and get both Massives activated and full as soon as possible. Due to Vengeance, running 3 tanks is definitely not a DPS loss on this fight either. Our Prot Pally put up 400-500k for the first bit, which resulted in his Massive being completely filled in 30s or less, freeing up our DPS to get on the boss very, very early.

Any tricks on dealing with anima font? We are very close to a kill 30% was our closest with the boss at 81 energy. We also had random deaths to matter swap where someone would get it twice, and would instantly die.

Make sure the person who get fonts move out of the group abit so people have some reaction time to move away from the circles on the ground, not much else you can do. You can also if you have a hunter/lock or someone who can move and dps they can go stand close to the person with font as to "attract" the fonts to them beacuse atleast in our experience they would mostly target the closest player. As for matter swap we had the same issue somtimes that one person would get two debuffs at the same time, the only way to really survive is a big CD or immunity, but if you activate your massives with a few seconds in between the matter swaps they won't cast it at the same time.

And also for anyone else in here, we found it easiest to 3 heal 3 tank we tried everything. At start we were 2 healing 2 tanking and had sub 5 % wipe but it's to hard to get there beacuse everythings need to be PERFECT if you only have 2 tanks 2 healers. We also tried 2 heal 3 tank and 3 heal 2 tank but we figured since we have enough dps might aswell 3 heal 3 tank beacuse it's very safe and leaves some room for mistakes. We used prot pala/prot war/blood dk to tank.

Make sure you also have someone designated to s tanding furthest out to "soak" the matter swaps i.e he will allways be the one that gets swapped with the debuffed person, we had me do it (mage) since I have both Greater invis and iceblock if I need to take it in conjuction with a jolt, and ice barrier otherwise.

There are 3 mobs to tank at the end, two of which get empowered and deal even more damage as the fight goes on. Plus you have to tank the boss and get both Massives activated and full as soon as possible. Due to Vengeance, running 3 tanks is definitely not a DPS loss on this fight either. Our Prot Pally put up 400-500k for the first bit, which resulted in his Massive being completely filled in 30s or less, freeing up our DPS to get on the boss very, very early.

Not sure if its good idea go with 3 tanks, you would need insane dps to kill it before 100 energy. Warrior si definately by far best tank, since he can avoid all Anima Rings. (Intervene, Charge, Leap). Also, you gonna have A LOT low % wipes, its really frustrating fight to be honest...

Short question as we're currently progressing on that fight:
If a player is afflicted by Anima Font, can this player move to a position where he won't reach any other player or is it impossible to outrange that effect?